Hacker News Reader

Agreed.

The problem is the users, not the platform. If users propagate misinformation, the users propagate misinformation.

The easy solution people often jump to is fighting negatives with negatives, assuming it yields a positive. But often a positive approach is more effective. Offering incentives for good acts, not just disincentives for bad acts, is a fairly popular recent trend backed by research.

In this case I can't help but think that the best solution is to focus on education and the propagation of correct information, not censorship (or at least, something that smells like censorship) of bad information. If "new media" is a problem we should be fighting it closer to the source.

I don't know what Facebook's role in that would be, but ideally, as a platform, it would be minimal.

But ultimately, it's worth remembering that it's hard to build a good system with bad raw materials. If people are interested in falsehoods and echo chambers, their social media will reflect that.

If the news feed were just a reveres chronological list of everything your friends posted, then I'd agree with you -- facebook would be just a medium. But they filter and sort it.

I would actually like to have a knob or a switch I could use to add or remove certain elements from the news feed filter algo. I think it would be great if one of those parameters was a (open source) "factuality score."

they're already doing this with click-bate, why not brain-rot? Especially if it's an optional feature.

I don't see why facebook is attempting to manipulate its users at all nor how anyone thinks this is acceptable.

If people spread misinformation, than the way to stop it is to spread correct information.

If facebook takes a more active role in shaping peoples' perceptions, i think it would be incredibly immoral and I would hope the company tanks.

Hmm, I mostly agree, but it's important to remember that a bad mechanism can encourage bad behavior as well. Facebook must make choices about design of the feed algorithm that have important effects on incentives and behavior. So even if they take a minimal censorship role, we cannot ignore the effect of the feed algorithm - in fact, we should focus on how to design it!

For example, the extent to which one "bubbles" users into their own echo chamber is largely up to the algorithm designer. If you look at "content aggregator" sites like HN, reddit, Facebook, they all have pros and cons. HN and reddit give incentives in the form of karma. They all have different levels of "bubbling" and opting into or out of bubbles.

Good design of such sites is an open problem -- even formalizing good goals for such sites is an open problem -- but it is a design problem we should be thinking about and addressing.

>>But ultimately, it's worth remembering that it's hard to build a good system with bad raw materials. If people are interested in falsehoods and echo chambers, their social media will reflect that.

I wouldn't phrase it quite so negatively, but I think you're on to something here. If people don't enjoy going on Facebook, they won't go on Facebook. What do people enjoy going to Facebook for? Interacting with their Facebook friends, whom they likely friended in at least some part due to their shared beliefs.

"Fixing" Facebook in this regard means forcing people to interact more with entities outside their self-selected social group, when the whole reason they got on Facebook in the first place is to interact with their self-selected social group! Facebook would be foolish to fix this problem, it would drive their users away.

The irony here is also the idea that all of this so-called propaganda comes from the right.

The left is constantly selecting it's own set of "facts" and tactfully leaves out whatever doesn't agree with their agenda.

Simply look at all the disingenuous pro-Clinton fact checking throughout the election. Just look at the number of rape, assault, race-baity bullshit that is circulated by liberals every day. There articles may not fly in the face of science, but they are usually equally misleading.

Is this a veiled attempt at trying to silence wikileaks? Infowars? There is a reason they are being called the regressive left. They want some articles to be banned from social media because they believe they aren't true. They believe, yet again, that people should not be allowed to make their own decisions in life.

Please don't make generalizations about large groups of people. It leads to irreconcilable feuds.

You shouldnt let a fear of feuds control you.

Maybe the word "feud" wasn't strong enough. Have you seen what's happening in Turkey? My Turkish friend suggested that's where this leads.

Should the world stop generalizing because it hurts your feelings? Because you could just look up the dictionary and understand that generalizing does not mean that whatever is said concerns every single person of the generalized group. It should be way easier for both you and the world.

Eh... unless you have numbers, I'm going to disagree. I don't visit FB much, but I've seen enough other social media to know that both sides play the same game. They both leave out data, mis-use existing data, and outright lie. I'd love statistics to prove me wrong.

Ims ure it is true but only one side has a dominant control over internet services.

Isn't that what the person you are replying to is essentially saying? That it's both sides, not just the right?

Is it? I took it to mean that it's coming from one side. Maybe I'm mis-understanding?

Yes, you are misunderstanding. The comment correctly accuses both sides of misleading propaganda.

>They both leave out data, mis-use existing data, and outright lie. I'd love statistics to prove me wrong.

I don't disagree with this at all. I just said that they are framing this as if the only propaganda on social media comes from the right.

My apologies then for mis-understanding!

What would be so bad about at&t offering a service that banned fraudsters from calling you? Or if the USPS refused to deliver mail that said "URGENT TIME SENSITIVE" on the envelope unless the sender could prove it really was urgent?

As someone with elderly relatives who've fallen for scams over email (which major email providers already do block, automatically), I would celebrate both of those outcomes.

> What would be so bad about at&t offering a service that banned fraudsters from calling you?

That isn't what we're talking about, now is it?

Labeling something "misinformation" is not an objective act, period.

Facebook will be engaging in censorship if they pursue this.

Objectivity is literally about things being factual regardless of subjective opinions.

There's nuance in the world, but if someone says "The earth is flat", it's not dystopian for a newspaper or online newsfeed to editorialize and minimize those claims.

its impossible to label an article presenting a theory or perspective as non-factual. no one ever said it was fact. anyone trying to claim it is fact is a fool.

Facts are things like:

I have 20$ in my pocket

Creationism isnt misinformation, even if it is lacking in evidence.

Agreed. This appears to advocate to fight propaganda with more propaganda. I don't trust anyone at Facebook to determine "facts."

Why? Facts are facts. The definition of a fact is that is an objective, verifiable statement. Trust does not come into play because you don't need to trust anyone judgment to verify a fact. Judgment is not involved.

Whether Fox fired Megyn Kelly or not is a fact. Facebook's is judgment is not involved in verifying it.

Whether an FBI agent that examined Clinton's emails is now dead or not is a fact. Facebook's judgment is not involved in verifying this fact.

You are conflating fact checking with opinion editing. The suggestion here is not that FB should filter out any kind of objectively verifiable fact, no matter which way the fact is used. It's that perhaps FB should filter out or at least not signal boost objectively verifiably false information.

Humans are bad at determining facts. That is a fact.

Consider the irony of refuting that statement. Yes the word "fact" has a definition, but that doesn't mean humans can or will obey that definition. In early 2003 the NY Times reported Iraq had WMD, so that was a fact, right? How long would it take me to find a Facebook employee who would tell me it's a "fact" that vaccines cause autism?

Anyone who claims they can differentiate facts from opinion and truth from fiction without bias, is the last person that should have that responsibility.

> "OMG, Trump has won through lies and deception! We failed to stop him. How on Earth did that happen? We must out-manipulate our opponents next time."

This is a ridiculous oversimplification of a complex and important set of issues.

The issue is the spread of facts vs misinformation, not liberalism vs conservativism, nor Democrats vs Republicans, nor Trump vs anti-Trump. Facts can work on both sides, as can misinformation. It's kind of fucked up to assume facts somehow only go one way.

> Social networks fact-checking their content? What's next? Should AT&T stop the spread of misinformation over its phone lines? Should USPS fact-check your mail?

Well, gee... Let's think carefully. Are your private phone calls on AT&T a public discourse? Is your mail? Do either AT&T or USPS signal boost some of your discussions during public transmittal? Is your analogy even logical?

Facebook is a communication medium, as you said. Moreover, it has a set of rules and policies governing what can be shared, which shared content gets shown to a given user, and how the content is further propagated and boosted. The entire discussion, which your post is completely sidestepping, is what content should or shouldn't be propagated and boosted.

One can make arguments for more rules or fewer on this, for different rules or keeping the same rules. But asserting that it is a non-issue or drawing false equivalences are non-arguments irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

I agree with some of this, but the main difference between AT&T and Facebook is that FB is controlling what you're receiving.

Imagine if USPS sent you things that were sent to you, but also random packages they thought were good for you.

Facebook, even just through its algorithm, is exercising some editorial control and distribution.

facebook will be less effective as a medium/content distributor if people become aware of the filtering that they do; i think they are shooting themselves in the foot if they start to actively censor the messages, people will just move on to twitter for politics and use facebook for the personal stuff only.

trust the market, there is plenty of competition that puts things into their proper place. Facebook doesn't own their users either.

Couldn't agree more.

There is no actual problem: social networks are simply not the right media to be a news source, and they were never meant to be.

Moreover, to expect to be fed "correct" information all the time, without no effort on the consumer's part, is flat out delusional. What we need, and what we have always needed, is to apply critical thinking.

Do you believe everything someone says? Well, then you have a problem.

I agree that the idea of "fact-checking" stories is troubling and is overall a bad idea.

You are not at all addressing what is actually in the article: the Newsfeed feature that surfaces the most shared stories. Facebook isn't discussing deleting homeopathy, Clinton body count, or Trump kompromat articles from our various Facebook walls.

They can fact check whatever they want, it's their site. It's stupid but people that should leave to greener pastures, it's not like in the beginning there was Facebook and we're bound to use that forever.

The problem is people want to 1) trust blindly and 2) not be taken advantage of that. You can only have one of those.

Such a comment betrays an incredibly unsophisticated understanding of the issues being discussed. Perhaps a revisit to McLuhan's maxim would be enlightening:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko6J9v1C9zE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoCrx0scCkM

Perhaps you could avail yourself of some of your erudition and explain what relationship these three links have to your objection.

https://www.fastcoexist.com/3061574/the-new-nationalism-of-b...

Brexit and Trump and Syriza and Bernie and all the rest of it point to the collapse of the middle class across the industrialized world more than anything else.

The middle class is doing fine. It's the working class that has been suffering, and they are the ones who voted for Trump in overwhelming numbers in swing states.

Sure, whichever. The terms are imprecise and many of the people we're talking about probably could have reasonably considered themselves middle-class in the past.

It has less to do with "the digital age" and more to do with governments ignoring large numbers of voters. This is what's supposed to happen when the ruling class gets out of touch.

The idea of a unified "ruling class" is laughable. The current president is constantly at odds with the political party that controls the Senate and the House of Representatives.

I also disagree with the notion that most congressmen are out of touch with their voters. Each individual congressman is pursuing the agenda he or she was voted into office by his or her constituents. An example: some constituents want to repeal Obamacare while those in other districts want to preserve it. Each set is affected differently so it is reasonable for different districts to have different opinions.

Deadlock is a feature of this Republic; the founders considered it to be superior to a tyranny of the majority over minority interests.

Of course there are multiple elements of the ruling class with different interests. But I think it's also safe to say there are a lot of issues where Republicans and Democrats are in complete agreement and their constituents are not.

What would be an example of one of these issues?

Immigration.

How to handle Wall Street post-meltdown or various military ventures seem like the most glaring examples to me.

>The idea of a unified "ruling class" is laughable. The current president is constantly at odds with the political party that controls the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Sort of. Not really. The political parties do represent different power factions.

But they are unified in the sense that people in the "deep state" - mid-high level bureaucrats, academia, and the media have more in common with each other than they do with you and me. And anything that threatens their collective control will be dealt with more harshly than they deal with each other.

Can you go into more depth? Also I believe you are leaving out a group; high-level business leaders, who often do a tour in government posts. (I'm not criticizing the practice; we want competent, subject matter experts working in government)

I agree. Business leaders belong on the list.

I once worked a job that involved dealing with a lot of civil service folks. We worked on a land-locked Navy base which had exactly two uniformed naval personnel (that I ever saw, anyway), who were in theory the #1 and #2 people in charge of a few hundred civil servants and a similar number of contractors.

Now, everyone knew the Navy guys (a captain and his XO) would be there for about 18 months and then they'd get transferred or retire. If the captain wanted something to get done, it would only get done if the civil servants (who had been there 20+ years) wanted it to get done, because they knew how to gum up the works until he was gone.

They also knew how to undermine and embarrass him, which at flag ranks (or wannabe flag ranks) will end your career. You can't fire a civil servant unless there's a felony involved, so even if he figured out what was going on he couldn't do much.

That's what happens in Washington, too. Political leaders come and go. They put appointees at the top positions of giant bureaucracies, but the bureaucrats have their own agendas, and they know how to work the system. They're know which reporters to leak what to if the president upsets them.

In Congress the Congressmen (and women) come and go. But they all rely on staff for information, and the same people pop up on congressional staffs over and over. Those are the people who actually write the laws (or edit what the lobbyists produce) - the congressmen don't even read what they're voting on.

The point is there's an entire layer of people, what I've seen called the "deep state", that you don't get to vote on except in the most indirect way. You could say they're not very ideological, if you're generous, or you could say their ideology is power. They went to the same schools, they go to the same parties, they marry each other, they read the same books, watch the same TV shows, etc.

It's not some grand conspiracy. It's just one of those self-organizing aristocracies that pops up whenever a government isn't overthrown for a long time.

You've got it backwards. People imbue meaning into the medium.

Also, saying the comment you replied to is "poor understanding" is both not supported by anything you shared, since your argument is as factual as theirs, and obnoxious. Keep it to yourself, please.